


Hohnq

by gwendolyncooper



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Gen, John Hart the Horrible Goose, crackfic, first time writing Ianto and of course it’s fucking THIS, goose!john, this is not my fault but I love it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-09
Updated: 2020-09-09
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:35:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26379676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendolyncooper/pseuds/gwendolyncooper
Summary: It’s not really a normal day to walk into the Torchwood Hub and find a goose holding a knife, but it seems that’s the way Ianto Jones’ day is going to start.
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, John Hart & Ianto Jones
Comments: 14
Kudos: 85
Collections: The Bloody Torchwood Server Made Me Write This





	Hohnq

**Author's Note:**

> This is for the Bloody Torchwood discord server. I love all of you.

It’s not really a normal day to walk into the Torchwood Hub and find a goose holding a knife, but it seems that’s the way Ianto Jones’ day is going to start.

The cog door rolls open, and a blur of feathers runs across his vision. He really only processes it as a goose when it skids to a stop to dart to the side - chased, rather closely, by one Gwen Cooper.

“Look out, he’s got a knife!”

Logic says he should probably help stop the goose, which, it seems, does in fact have one of Owen’s scalpels clasped in its beak. Survival instinct says to disarm it. Sheer surprise has him simply observe as the goose skitters across the floor, webbed feet slapping against the concrete and wings waving wildly. It’s not a particularly graceful goose - a fact that somehow makes sense when he sees what Gwen has clasped in her hands. It’s a red jacket - a very _recognizable_ red jacket.

“John, _put the knife down!_ ” And that’s Jack’s voice, as he appears from the medbay, bounding up the stairs to block the goose’s path.

So, the goose that is John Hart, as it would seem, naturally, crashes _directly_ into Jack’s legs, and is summarily pounced upon by Gwen, wrapped up in the jacket, and hauled into her grasp. Jack wrestles the knife from its beak and is bitten for his efforts, and then they fall back away from each other, panting.

Right, so, things have happened while he’s been gone.

“...things have happened while I was gone, then.” His eyebrow is arched high enough that it might slide right into his hairline as he speaks his thoughts aloud, and both members of the team turn to look at him.

“Where have _you_ been, mate?” Owen’s head pops up from the medbay, clasping some sort of syringe that he can only assume holds a sedative.

“Went to get coffee. I _did_ say I was.” He gestures with the bag in his hand, holding the coffee beans he has retrieved from a shop only he knows the location of, despite Gwen’s best efforts to tail him to the source.

“Right,” Owen replies, before moving towards the goose in Gwen’s arms with the syringe. The goose in question again begins to struggle the force of it nearly throwing her off balance as it lets out a loud, aggressive _HONK_ at the medic.

“Okay, okay, if you stop causing a scene, he won’t have to!” Jack’s voice is raised just to the point of falling short of yelling, and the goose whips around to stare at him suspiciously. There’s a silent standoff for a moment before it seems to relent, and begrudgingly remains where he is. Owen huffs, irritated, but lowers the syringe he’d been threatening him with.

“...does anyone want to _explain_ why John’s a goose?”

“It’s that new device that came through the rift near the market,” Toshiko’s voice floats overhead, and Ianto steps slightly further into the main area in order to crane his head back, looking up at the woman on the second story. If he didn’t know better, it would look as though she was _hiding_ from the murderous goose.

A sharp honk startles him, but not quite as much as the aggressive feeling of the goose’s beak snapping shut on his arm. A sharp exclamation escapes him as he jerks back, and Gwen rips John away from him.

“ _Hey!_ ” Jack snaps. The goose looks unabashed.

On second thought, maybe Tosh isn’t wrong.

“It’s changed him into a goose. Don’t know why he was here, he popped in to the middle of a test to see what it does with his vortex manipulator. Seems it’s some sort of transformation machine, rearranges the molecular form of a body.”

“And then he stole a scalpel,” Ianto finishes, nodding slowly, before he glances around at the team. “And I _don’t_ suppose we’re going to leave him that way?” Perhaps the hopeful tone is a bit much, given the warning glance Jack gives _him_ now.

“No. We’re going to figure out how to change him back, and then we’re sending him on his way.”

“That’s unfortunate.” Owen, in a moment of wisdom, steps back out of the goose’s reach before it can snap at _him,_ too. Ianto dusts off the sleeve of his suit where he was bitten, finding a small tear and leveling a look more _threatening_ than baleful at the creature (of course it would be _John Hart_ that manages to become a goose on their watch). John honks almost proudly.

“Oi.” Gwen jostles him roughly, glaring John down when he turns to her. The goose doesn’t blink. Neither does Gwen.

She’s in a staring contest with the goose. Clearly, they’re giving their best efforts to change him back, right now.

“Right, Tosh, you work on reversing it.” Jack starts giving orders, and it’s with a sinking feeling that Ianto silently predicts his own role in this operation. “Owen, run the blood samples, make sure he’s not going to spontaneously combust. Gwen, you come with me, we’re going to go see if there’s anything left at that site. Ianto-”

Ianto’s already turning to their captain before he can say it, shaking his head. “ _No-_ ”

“You make sure he doesn’t destroy anything.”

“It’s your turn,” Gwen interjects, and he turns to argue with her, too. She’s still not blinked. For once, John is still, staring her down. “I’ve been handling him for the last hour.”

“And you’re doing brilliantly,” he returns, before Jack rests a hand on his arm, again drawing his attention.

“I’m not sure she won’t snap his neck. Please, we’ll be quick. Couple of hours and we’ll have him back as he belongs, promise.”

“ _I_ can’t promise I won’t snap his neck,” he’s _pleading_ now, under his breath so the bloody _goose_ won’t hear, but Jack simply gives him a _look_ that means _do it now,_ they’d discuss it later.

And they certainly _would_ be discussing it.

“He may be roast dinner by the time you get back,” he protests, and Jack shakes his head.

“I want to come back to that goose unharmed, Ianto.”

“It’s not _him_ I’m worried about!”

“John - _play nice._ ” The goose finally breaks its staredown (drawing a triumphant _ha!_ from Gwen in the process) to honk balefully at Jack, who narrows his gaze. “I _mean_ it. Behave, or I _will_ let him turn you into dinner.”

“I’ll just pull out the cookbooks, shall I?” Ianto can’t help but feel a _little_ more cheerful at the prospect as Gwen carefully sets John down, and another dissatisfied _honk_ echoes through the chamber as John flares his wings at Ianto. The welshman doesn’t move, simply narrowing his gaze at him and lifting an eyebrow. Jack shakes his head and gestures to Gwen, and both disappear. Tosh slowly descends the stairs, creeping past John uncertainly, but the goose seems fixated on Ianto now. Threatening. Watchful. _Stalking_ him, almost.

It takes another few moments before he realizes that he, too, is in a staring contest with the _bloody goose._

“Right,” he mutters under his breath before he looks away, shaking his head. “You, stay _right_ there. Don’t touch anything, don’t do anything.”

John honks, but it’s quieter than before. Ianto doesn’t dare hope it means he’s actually _acquiescing._ He sighs, glancing down at the bags in his hands. “I’m putting these away. Don’t. Move.”

He backs away from John, who ruffles his feathers, but slowly lowers himself onto his red jacket on the ground, almost as though he’s nesting. It’s a surprise, but not an unwelcome one. Ianto walks backwards as far as he can, before he finally turns his back on the goose.

It’s a mistake.

It’s less than eight seconds - he steps away, puts the bag down, whips back around to find the goose.

It’s gone.

_The goose is loose._

“JOHN!”

His voice echoes through the Hub, answered only by silence, and then Owen’s response filtering up from the medbay.

“Have you lost the bloody thing already?”

“He’s still a person, not a thing, and I didn’t see him,” Tosh calls from her desk, not looking up from the screens as it filters data from the device wired into them.

“It’s _John,_ he was a thing to begin with,” Owen retorted, but Ianto wasn’t paying attention. He moved cautiously into the main area, scanning the upper levels to guard from attack from above. It’s eerily quiet in a way that’s quite unsettling - things are _never_ quiet when John is around.

_Crash._

There’s a loud noise from behind, and Ianto spins, instinctively grabbing for his weapon. Blue eyes widen in righteous anger as he’s confronted with the sight of his freshly-acquired coffee beans, spilled and scattered along the ground, and the sound of a challenging _HONK_ from the goose now standing proudly on the countertop, staring at him.

The weapon is released, but there’s a danger in the young welshman’s eyes now that shouldn’t be dismissed.

“I just bought that coffee,” he says, and his tone is the eerily calm sound at this point. The goose, it seems, realizes the peril it’s just put itself in.

There’s a moment of silence.

An apologetic honk.

Ianto lunges.

In the end, the security footage was deleted, and Tosh, whose head had been buried in her work the whole time, didn’t seem too keen on trying very hard to retrieve it. It had absolutely nothing to do with the look Ianto gave her when Jack requested it. He’d never threaten her in any way, of course.

There’s a tally that no one but the goose and Ianto Jones will ever know, but it runs like this in the young agent’s mind:

-Tears in a perfectly pressed suit: 4.

-Bites from an annoyingly tenacious goose: 8.

-Feathers plucked (absolutely on accident, of course) as he apprehended said goose: 18.

-Bags of coffee spilled: 1.

-Number of bruises on the goose: Impossible to say, it’s feathered.

-Curse words uttered: Only 2, he’s not keen on cursing often.

-Number of roast goose recipes he’s vowed to try: 6.

When Jack and Gwen return to the Hub, they find Ianto leaning casually against the kitchen counter, a fresh pot of coffee brewing from the one bag of unspilled beans. The man looks slightly ruffled and definitely a little worse for wear, but the spilled coffee is nowhere in sight - and neither is the goose. The cookbook that Ianto is perusing has several lovely roast goose recipes, and he notes definite concern about John’s ultimate fate in Jack’s eyes - before a flurry of irate activity and honking is heard from within one of the lower kitchen cabinets, wedged shut with a chair.

Ianto is summarily relieved of goosesitting duty, a responsibility he thinks, personally, should never have been handed to him in the first place.

By the time Tosh figures out a way to reverse the process, Ianto has changed into a fresh suit, fixed his ruffled hair, and looks quite put together again. The process is quick, and John seems to have _no_ shame about standing in the middle of the medbay naked. In fact, he might even be _smug_ about it, until he looks up and sees the slight smile Ianto gives him, and the cookbook tucked under his arm still.

It’s at that point he makes a hasty exit, bringing to an end the nightmare that is John Hart, the horrible goose.


End file.
